DANIEL AMONG THE WATCHERS

by David Ross

1-6 Feb 2001

Introduction

Last year, while working on the Daniel/Nabunai project, I decided to toss Glenn Miller some "pushback". A certain Dr Stuckenbruck had dug out an unpublished section of the Book of Giants (4Q530 col 2.16-19), analysed it, and declared that Daniel 7 had (probably) used it. It turns out Stuckenbruck did not argue his case well enough, because not long after I alerted Miller, I found this on Miller's website:

Pushback: "I think you just tripped yourself up, glenn, with this 'from less to more' argument on borrowing direction. At Qumran, we have manuscripts of the Book of Giants that have a throne-theophany very similar to Daniel, in which it looks like Daniel is the one who 'inflates' the numbers! [See HI:SASQ50:216ff, where this is documented even.] This would make Daniel the borrower and the "semi-Enochian" BG the source. And, since BG is fairly late, this would make Daniel even later."

I do not know if it is my letter which he is quoting (or paraphrasing). Regrettably I sent my letter through his online form and did not save it to my hard drive. But it does look like me when I'm rushed.

Whoever did it, he succeeded in trolling Miller into rebutting a peer-reviewed scholarly paper. I would like to know if Stuckenbruck plans to clarify his arguments. But until we can get a professional scholar to handle this, it's amateur night tonight... so let's have at it.

Miller has conceded that "the author you mentioned makes an compelling case for literary dependence between Daniel and BG" (his boldface), so this project will assume that much and deal with the direction of said dependence.

The Book of Numbers

Miller insisted that Stuckenbruck "'mis-counted' in his argument about the 'numbers'." Stuckenbrock had aligned the two pericopes in a synopsis. Miller broke apart this synopsis into quotations, except for the numbers, so I'll restore the rest of it here without the offending rows:

Miller continued, "The author you mention explicitly refers to the phenomena (sic) of Daniel turning "hundreds" into "thousands" (twice, p.218 and 210), but this is a faulty comparison, involving the incorrect terms in the comparison." And then he cited the numbers according to how Stuckenbruck aligned it in the synopsis:

(A myriad = 10,000, for those new to the Greek fraternity.)

Miller concludes here:

"As can be seen from this chart, the BG has added another phrase "a hundred hundreds" and expanded "a myriad myriads" to "all". The "thousand thousands" was unchanged. The BG--at least in this case--has clearly expanded on Daniel, and not vice versa. Also, the author there notes that BG has three verbs (serving, worshipping, standing) while Daniel has only two (serving, standing)."

First off, note that Miller is not actually basing his rebuttal on the article, but on the synopsis. The synopsis unfortunately assigned Daniel's "thousand thousand served him" opposite BG's "thousand thousand [?]", contrary to Stuckenbruck's article (pp. 219-220), which had it opposite BG's "hundred hundred served him". In my imperfect synopsis above, limitations of time and HTML inflicted the opposite mistake: I assigned the whole of Daniel 7:17b to BG's "And the Great Holy One sat down", despite that only the former's first line parallels anything in BG. Miller has seized upon a printing failure, not a conclusion found anywhere in the text.

As for the three verbs:

The BG has some elements not included in Daniel (e.g., the judgment at the end) as does Daniel (e.g., the appearance of the throne figure). Inclusion and exclusion of larger passages by authors are quite legitimate and not as objective of criteria of borrowing as is expansion of numbers ("myriad myriads" to all) and expansion of series (the addition of "hundred hundreds" at the beginning of the series).

Miller is half-right that when dealing with dependence, the critic (whether Stuckenbruck, Miller, or I) must be very careful when deciding whether the redactor has added or subtracted to a text; and expanded numbers are a good indicator of dependence. But faced with the choice between a faulty synopsis and a fuzzy presentation, he has chosen the synopsis as his base to argue with the presentation. I will resubmit the evidence in a way I hope we can all follow.

Miller assumes that BG meant "stood before him" as a synonym for service and "all" as a number. "Stood before" is certainly meant as such a parallel in Daniel, because it appears with a numerical value, and is followed by the court sitting down. 4Q530 does not preserve BG's synonym for "serve", but since BG will use "stood before" later, that phrase is not at all likely to be employed here. Stuckenbruck restored "were worshipping" instead, with which Miller does not quibble.

Daniel used "stood before" for his parallel despite that many other, closer exaggerated-synonyms for service were available. BG for its part used "stood before" in the context of "all". "All" is not usually a number. When Linus in 1950's-era Peanuts answered the question "how many eggs are in a basket?" with "all of them", the reader was supposed to laugh. Nor did BG then claim, as did Daniel, that the Heavenly Host did anything else but stand. "Stood before" is therefore merely an action for BG. It is in just such a way that Daniel says "the court sat down". And as Daniel's "court" is not a numerical value, but refers to previously-established thousands and myriads, BG's "all" is solely a reference to that text's hundreds and thousands. Following Stuckenbruck's and even Miller's chain of argument from there, Daniel is the one who inflated the numbers.

Plus and Minus

Miller tried to paper it over, but BG and Daniel 7:9-10 have pluses and minuses "of larger passages" than this relative to each other. Stuckenbruck was concerned that most of Daniel's pluses against BG comprise speculative details, particularly the Ezekielian description of the merkabah. Why, if BG knew them, did it not include or even allude to them? Against that, in BG the angels come to Earth, and the books opened have a judgement (and one on all men). By the definition of a "minus", Daniel does not contain them; but we can determine whether he knew of them, and explain why we did not include them.

Daniel was seeing the Most High in Heaven. Accordingly for Daniel, "the ruler of the heavens" did not "descend to Earth", as He did in BG. Interestingly, right after the angels came in BG, they erected (yhytw) thrones for the Most Holy down here on Earth (l. 16). But Daniel also saw that "thrones were set up" (rmyw) while he watched - in Heaven, such thrones ought to be affixed immovably since the Creation (as the NIV tries to imply: "set in place"). Ezekiel and Enoch did not see the Lawn Chairs Of The Gods - and neither did Moses in Ezekiel the Tragedian's Exagoge, which Miller thinks also depended on Daniel. This feature is unique to BG and Daniel. The best solution is that Daniel knew of this feature of BG, edited it, but left evidence of his source.

BG's plus with the books is twofold: 1. a judgement, and 2. against all flesh. In the first case, while Daniel did not explicitly call Dan 7:14 a judgement, he called the convocation a "court" and referred to its sentence twice later (Dan 7:22,26). In the second case, Daniel's court was judging one man only (the "little big horn", so to speak), not all flesh. The books are an undetailed, unexplained, and elsewhere unmentioned symbol in Daniel, and are not important to Daniel's narrative. In BG, they are a vital part of the judgement. This is what we would expect of a tale of the Enoch corpus, which is all about heavenly tablets and ancient wisdom. Therefore, for the first case it is most likely BG had the original form, the apparent pluses of which Daniel saved for later verses. The exception is "against all flesh", but then, Daniel only had one villain. So again: Daniel used what he could of BG, gutted the meaning of the books, but could not bring himself to remove the books themselves.

Every one of Daniel's minuses is therefore explicable as a part of BG which Daniel did not want. But the material Daniel shares with BG is more incriminating: recently-established thrones, a less-fitting "stood before", superfluous "books", and a tenfold increase of the Heavenly Host. All have a simple, shared explanation - intertextual strain. Daniel found a suitable divine vision in BG, but wanted it set in Heaven instead of Earth. Accordingly Daniel removed the angels descending to Earth and the details of the judgement, instead incorporating a large swath of Enoch- and Ezekiel-based visionary ideas. He also decided that the angels would use their thrones, so he harmonised the thousands worshipping(?) with all standing (including the thousands, remember), and then had them all sit. While he was at it he multiplied their numbers.

Conclusion

Daniel 7:9-10 is a transposition of the Book of Giants's theophany scene. Stuckenbruck was on the right track, even if he did not support his argument precisely enough for Daniel's present devotees to understand. Why such an obviously late, plagiarised, and ill-written book still has devotees remains a mystery to me.

Any thoughts? e-mail me :^)

Miscellany

Started this 1-6 Feb 2001.

Links

• Good question...Was Daniel written AFTER the events he foretold? by Glenn Miller. Draft; May 16, 1998, updated Jan 2001.
• The Epistle of Nebuchadnezzar. Daniel 4, but the appendix deals with its relationship with Daniel 7.
• Visions of Moses. Another site, more relevant to Giants.
• Back to the House of David

Bibliography